


open myself up this way again

by saffronHeliotrope



Series: invitation/complication [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dave is Bad at Feelings, Hand Jobs, Multi, Oral Sex, Polyamory, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 18:08:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saffronHeliotrope/pseuds/saffronHeliotrope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your hands are shaking as they do up your pants. You remember, in pieces: John’s hand on the curve of Rose’s bare hip. Her eyes closed, lips parted. John’s breath harsh in your ear. Kisses down your breastbone. Rose’s fingers laced through yours, holding your hands above your head while John -- while --</p><p>You squeeze your eyes shut. Christ, the things you did, the sounds you made, so needy and desperate in your own ears that you could die. They couldn’t have torn you open more effectively if they’d laid you out and flayed the skin from your bones. What are they going to think of you.</p><p>What are you going to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	open myself up this way again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Everlind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/gifts).



> _see, honey, I am not some broken thing_  
>  _I do not lay here in the dark waiting for thee_  
>  _no, my heart is gold. my feet are light_  
>  _and I am racing out on the desert plains all night_  
>  \- Phosphorescent, [Song for Zula](http://youtu.be/FcdOLKx2XG8)

You wake up all at once, like an electric shock.

Naked. Unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar room. (Not the same unfamiliar room as yesterday.) Hotel. Wedding. Karkat and Jade.

Rose. John.

You turn your head, and there she is, curled on her side, sleeping peacefully with her white-blonde hair tumbled on the pillowcase. There’s an arm slung over her from behind, hand curled around her wrist, and just beyond her you see tufts of messy black hair.

Oh no. Oh no oh no.

You slide out from under the sheets. Oh God, you’ve ruined everything. You fish your black boxers out from under Rose’s purple silk dress where it lies crumpled, grab a pair of trousers that might be yours off the back of a chair. Fuck, you must have been so drunk, what were you thinking? (Not a whisper of hangover, no fuzzy mouth or throbbing head, none at all.) The early light is dim through the heavy curtains and you can’t find your shirt. You ignore the pull of muscles, the dull sweet ache of --

Shit. Shit fuck _shit._

Your hands are shaking as they do up your pants. You remember, in pieces: John’s hand on the curve of Rose’s bare hip. Her eyes closed, lips parted. John’s breath harsh in your ear. Kisses down your breastbone. Rose’s fingers laced through yours, holding your hands above your head while John -- while --

You squeeze your eyes shut. Christ, the things you did, the sounds you made, so needy and desperate in your own ears that you could die. They couldn’t have torn you open more effectively if they’d laid you out and flayed the skin from your bones. What are they going to think of you.

What are you going to do.

You are going to run, is what you’re going to do. You’re going to sneak away and hide and by the time you have to see them again you will have rebuilt your defenses and you’ll be able to play it cool, you’ll be fine, you can’t _find your fucking shirt_ and you have your jacket and shoes and one sock which is okay but you _can’t walk the halls of this hotel without your goddamn shirt_ \--

“Where are you going?” says a soft voice behind you, husky and low, rusty with sleep.

You turn.

John is propped up on one elbow, squinting a little at you without his glasses. He scrubs one hand through his disastrous hair and something inside you breaks.

“Hey,” you whisper. “I didn’t want to wake you. I’m, uh. I’m gonna take off.”

“Oh.” he says. He frowns at the clock, then at you. “Okay. You don’t have to.” A yawn splits his face.

There’s a dark red blotch just under his right collarbone and you wish you could remember whether you were the one who put it there. “I know. I just -- I need to find my shirt, ok?”

“Oh,” he whispers again, pushing himself up to sit. You want to climb into his lap so you look away. “You want to take one of mine? My suitcase is over there.”

You look but don’t move. “Dave.” He swings his legs out to sit at the edge of the bed, sheet clutched in his lap. “Are you ok?”

You don’t want to talk, and you don’t want to leave, and you can’t stay. “It’s just. You and Rose. It’s just that I have a lot to lose here.”

His brows draw together. You hate yourself for what he’s going to say, but he surprises you, because he’s John, and he doesn’t get defensive. “You’re not going to lose anything.” He frowns at you again. “Did we pressure you into this? Last night? Because I never wanted --”

“No!” You catch yourself, and whisper. “God, no. Jesus.” You scrub at your eyes with your hand, realize your hair is all over the place, run fingers through it to calm it down. The corner of his mouth twitches up like he can’t help it. You are a fucking coward and you say, “Look, I’ve gotta go, ok?”

“Dave, wait.” He reaches out and catches your wrist. The touch shocks through you, freezes you, and somehow everything that’s freaking out in you quiets right down. “You can go if you want. But. Um.” He blinks a couple of times. “This doesn’t have to be a one-time thing.”

His hand is still on your wrist, his palm warm and dry. “Rose isn’t monogamous,” he says. “I knew that when we got married. We’ve promised to be each others’ primary partners. And I never thought I’d want to be poly myself. But.” His hand slides down to yours, and you lace your fingers into his, instinctively, an autonomic reaction. “I think in some cases. I.” He swallows hard. “I’d like to date you. I’d like you to date us.”

You smile a little in spite of yourself. “John Egbert, are you asking me to go steady?”

The worried look goes out of his eyes, and you find yourself relaxing just a little. “Yeah, maybe I am.” He tugs at your hand. “Stay?”

It’s the simplest request. There are two paths before you: one where you protect yourself, extricate yourself, borrow a shirt and go build yourself a fucking miserable fortress of solitude, and another one where John looks up at you with those stupidly blue eyes, and the jacket falls from your hand to the floor, and he draws you forward so you’re standing between his knees, and his hand comes up to hook a finger through your side belt loop, and he leans in and touches his lips to the place above your waistband between navel and hipbone.

Your breath catches, and the other path is gone, just like that.

He kisses you slowly, lips exploring your skin from waistband to ribcage. You inhale and tense up, somewhere between ticklish and terrified, and he breathes the tiniest huff of a laugh. He catches your hips and holds you still, lips tracing over the softly defined lines of your abdominal muscles. His eyes flicker up to yours over and over again, focused and intent. You thread your fingers into the hair at the back of his head. Your other hand is on his shoulder, as if for balance. You slide your thumb over his skin a little, back and forth.

“Come back to bed?” he whispers, and you feel it as a brush of lips, a puff of air against your skin. You nod once, jerkily.

He undoes your trousers -- a little awkwardly, smiling as he fumbles -- and lets them drop to your ankles. You hardly breathe as he slides his fingers under the waistband of your shorts. It’s not that he’s unfamiliar with what’s underneath -- last night happened, after all -- but you can understand his hesitation. Now, in the gray morning dimness, in the utter silence of the room, there’s a fragile _something_ between you, and nothing in your experience has prepared you to deal with it.

He pushes your underwear down. You’re at half-mast, and he looks at you a little warily, then kisses the soft place to the inside of your hipbone. His closeness is almost too much to bear, and your hands tighten a little on him, unconsciously.

“Sorry,” he says softly. “I’m still working on figuring out what to do with. You know.”

You laugh a little. “Dude, you’ve got one yourself. How have you not figured out how it works?”

“Not mine, dingus, someone else’s.” Without warning, he bites above your hip, teeth digging in sharp and quick. It’s unexpected, and you jump a little, a current of electricity running straight to your groin.

“That -- that works,” you say, a little breathless, a little too loud.

He muffles a laugh against your skin. “Quiet, you’ll wake Rose,” he whispers.

There’s a rustle of sheets from behind him. “Too late,” says Rose.

“Whoops,” you say, deadpan, and John says sheepishly, “Hi, love.”

Rose rolls over, stretching, body outlined clearly under the sheet, her round breasts pushing up against the fabric. Your mouth goes a little dry looking at her. She smiles sweetly at both of you. “Thank God you worked things out on your own,” she says. “It’s far too early for talking.”

John laughs a little, dropping his forehead against your stomach. You resist the urge to cross your arms, cover yourself, intensely aware of the weirdness of the situation. “So you were just going to lie there and listen to me making a damn fool of myself,” you say instead.

“No, I would have helped you if you hadn’t straightened yourselves out,” she says lightly. “Now enough of this nonsense and come back to bed.”

“I agree,” says John. He leans back, eyes hooded and dark, and tugs on your hands. You step out of your pants, toe off your one sock. John scoots back and lifts the sheet so you can crawl up to hover over him.

He pulls you down, and his body is warm and smooth, hard and yielding, perfect against yours. “I’m going to kiss him now,” he says conversationally.

Rose makes a little _mmm_ sound. “Go ahead,” she says. Giving permission. Something in you quivers a little at the announcement, the assent.

He reaches up to brush the hair off your forehead, then he tilts his chin up an inch and his mouth finds yours. You close your eyes. It’s unhurried, but relentless -- he’s mindful of morning breath, not pushing deep, just soft lips and a little suction, the least brush of his tongue against your lips. Clinging and parting, sharing the same air. He kisses the corner of your mouth, sucks on your bottom lip, his mouth plucking at yours until you’re dizzy. You’ve got one fist clenched in the sheet and one in his hair, and he wraps an arm tight around you and half-rolls, half lifts you over so you’re on your back and his body presses yours down into the mattress.

There’s nothing half-mast about either of you anymore, and every inch of your skin is hypersensitive. He kisses like you’re the only thought in his mind, the only thing in the world worth kissing, and the blinding spotlight of his focus is a little overwhelming. It’s been a long time since anyone kissed you like they had nothing to prove, without it being a contest, without anxiety.

It reminds you of Karkat, actually.

Part of you wants to fight him, push him, hurry him along, because you can’t take this suspense, this suspended moment, waiting for the punchline, for the rug to be yanked out. Waiting for him to do what you always do: detach, disengage, throw up defenses before anyone can get the jump on you.

_Karkat_. It flashes over you all at once, all the times you pulled back, pulled away, saw his heart out on his sleeve and used it against him, teased him, laughed at him while he was emotionally invested.

Bro used to do the same thing to you.

Your throat closes up.

John stops kissing you. Your eyes are still closed. “Hey.” Fingers in your hair. “Dave. Everything ok?”

You nod once. “Everything’s perfect. Don’t you even fret.” Your voice has gone all tight and strange. It still seems very important not to open your eyes. You just want him to keep kissing you so you can stop thinking again, but he doesn’t. It’s silent for a long awful moment. They’re going to leave, they’re going to decide you’re not worth the trouble, Rose is going to say _I should have known_ , John is going to say _why did we think this was a good idea_ \--

He shifts over to the side of you slightly, and slender fingers stroke through your hair. “Dave,” says Rose softly, just beside your ear. “Come back to us, sweetheart.”

John kisses your cheek just at the corner of your mouth, lingering, not demanding anything. You let out a shuddering breath you didn’t realize you were holding. You open your eyes, and they’re just looking at you, quiet and calm.

You breathe. _No worries, peachy keen_ , is the first thing you want to say, followed by _fuck, can we slow down? Because I’m about to die._

“Hey, it’s ok, buddy,” says John. “This is us.”

“Yeah,” you say finally. Your voice is almost steady. “My brain is being a whiny little baby and won’t shut up.”

Rose kisses you on the temple. “That’s unfortunate,” she says. “Doesn’t your brain know we’re just using you for your body?”

John goes _pfff_ and you say, “Shit, yeah, poor guy probably feels left out. That must be it.”

Rose says, “There must be something we can do to quiet it down,” then she leans in and traces the shell of your ear delicately with the tip of her tongue. John is watching, transfixed. All in spite of yourself, the tension is melting out of your body, and you’re becoming aware again of the warm nakedness of the two of them, so close on either side of you.

“Is it working?” whispers Rose, lips right against your ear. The warmth of her breath makes you prickle with goosebumps, and for an answer, you turn your head and catch her bottom lip between yours.

“Almost,” you say.

“That’s not quite good enough,” says John somewhere above you. His hand is stroking up and down your torso, soothing and petting you down. When his thumb grazes over your nipple, you twitch involuntarily. “Oh,” says John, the nerd, and bends his head to kiss you there. When he sucks the little peak of flesh between his lips, rubbing with his tongue, you jump and hiss at the sparks that run all over your body.

“I think he’s sensitive here,” John says to Rose.

“No shit, Sherl _aahh-hahh_ ,” you say eloquently as Rose laughs and traces your other nipple with a lacquered fingernail.

“God, this is too much fun,” says John, bending toward you again, and between the warmth and softness of his lips and the delicate scrape of Rose’s nails your nerves are getting whiplash.

“This is -- _mmph_ \-- this is fun for you, is it?” you manage.

“Endlessly,” says Rose. John looks up at her, their eyes meeting as he drags his tongue hard over your nipple, and you watch her lips part ever-so-slightly, faint color blooming on her cheeks. The air between them practically crackles. And then John is sitting up and Rose is leaning in, and they kiss, deep and hungrily, John’s hand coming up to cup the side of her face, then stroking down her throat.

They are so gorgeous, and _they let you in_. It’s like a lightning bolt to your nervous system. God, you want them both so much. You absolutely cannot help the whine that escapes you.

They break apart to look at you, John laughing his fond laugh, his head dropping against Rose’s shoulder. “Fuck, sorry,” you say. “You two just do your thing. I’ll just be over here. Don’t mind me, I’m fine, I swear.”

John is touching you again, and heat trails after his fingertips under your skin. “Is that all you want?” Rose asks smoothly. “To watch?”

John’s touches are taking your higher thought processes and turning them to mush. You watch Rose’s hand trail down his chest, and you want to follow her fingers with your tongue. “...No.”

“Then what do you want?”

You look at her, and you look at John, and you look back at her again. “I want to suck your husband off,” you say deliberately.

_Please_. It hangs in the air unsaid. John makes a choked sound.

Rose’s lips curl into a smile. “Permission granted.”

John is bright red. “So glad these things are being decided for me,” he says as you push yourself up to lean against the headboard.

“Like you disapprove. Get up here, you idiot.”

John scoffs, but he kneels up and shuffles toward you. “You’d better be nice to me or I’ll revoke access.” You tug at his hips until he straddles your torso.

“As if. Come here.” His cock hangs right in front of your face, flushed and heavy. He hisses when you wrap your hand around the base, then you lean forward, taste him, suck the head into your mouth.

“ _Mmmhh_ , Dave.” You bob your head down, then pull back, hands on his hips, tugging him toward you.

When he resists, you pull off him with a wet _pop._ “Dude. Come on. Rose, tell him I’m not a fragile flower.”

“He’s really not,” she comments. “You’d be surprised at what he likes. You know, I used to have this strap-on, even bigger than the one you’re so scared to --”

“Okay, okay,” says John.

“Oh yeah, the red one,” you say. “God, I loved that thing. You used to bend me over and --”

“Shall I just leave the two of you to it, then?” says John testily. Rose snickers and buries her face in the pillow. “Cause I can think of plenty of other things I could be doing right now.”

“Liar,” you say, slouching down a little more so his knees are practically in your armpits. You let your head fall back against the pillows, and encourage him forward by the hips until the tip of his cock just rests on your bottom lip.

You look up at him and hold his gaze while you trace up his slit with the tip of your tongue.

His mouth drops open a little and he stares down at you like he’s utterly stunned. Lips brushing against him, you say, “C’mon, John, do it.”

He blushes harder, bites his lip, and presses forward a little, hesitantly. You moan softly around the head of his cock, encouraging, and he pushes deeper.

Oh _fuck_ yes.

You stare up at him and let him take your mouth, and he does, slowly, carefully, with restraint that makes you burn with impatience and greed. He’s perfect, filling you up, and you’re drowning in the dark musky gorgeous taste of him.

He goes from cautiously holding on to the headboard, to propping himself against the wall above the bed with his forearm, to dropping his forehead against his arm. You open your throat, coax him deeper with your tongue against the underside of him, fight to stay relaxed while the look on his face gets you so hot you squirm against the sheets --

Then Rose settles over your legs, immobilizing you, draws her hands down your stomach, and strokes your straining cock with both hands, and all at once the tables turn on you.

You whine around John, twist fruitlessly under them. Rose laughs low and does it again. You can feel the heat rising in your face. John reaches down and strokes your cheek with his thumb. He hasn’t lost his rhythm, slow and steady and deep, and you whimper at the touch, at the way you offered him control and he so readily took it. His hand drifts to cradle your jaw, then his fingers to your throat.

Rose has gotten lube or oil from somewhere and the feeling of her fingers curling around you smooth and relentless is spiraling you tighter around the core of heat deep in your gut. For all of John’s careful restraint, you can feel the trembling in his thighs, the way he tenses with each slow push. You can’t control the noises you’re making now, between John fucking your mouth and the slip-slide of Rose’s hands.

“Shhh, baby, shhh,” says John, which does absolutely nothing to calm you down. You’re going to cry; you’re going to blast apart in a million little pieces. “Do you want me to come like this?” he asks, and his voice is none too steady either.

You mumble a frantic _mm-hmm_ around him.

John says, “Rose? Is this ok?”

She shifts off your legs, settles beside you where she can watch. One hand is still stroking you, maddeningly slow and light. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, _please_.”

You stare up at him as he bites his lip and starts to move a little faster. You urge him on with your hands on his hips. All at once he takes your hands and tugs them above your head, holding them there with one hand on your crossed wrists. Some knot inside you loosens, and you moan low in your throat, eyes closing. Oh, fuck, yes, this is what you want, this and more, cuffs and ropes and straps and --

“Stay with me, baby,” says John, and your eyes fly open. He’s watching you, pupils huge and black, that beautiful flush all up his chest and shoulders. You want everything -- you want to touch every inch of him, and you want him to take you, tie you up and tear you down. And all the while Rose is stroking you slow and unceasing. You are effervescing; your atoms are spinning apart, and you are anchored only by the hand at your wrists, by Rose’s touch winding you tighter, by John’s eyes in your eyes and his cock thick and wet and sliding, overloading all your senses.

He moans softly, leans hard on the hand holding your wrists. “Oh my God. Oh, Dave, I’m close.”

You open wider, you give him everything, slick and sloppy-wet, and he groans and presses deep, pushing you into the pillows. For one long suspended moment you can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t think, and then with a loud _aahhh, Dave,_ he pulls back and comes in hot slick pulses over your tongue. Heart racing, greedy, you swallow all you can, suck at him for more, until he pulls away, breathing hard.

He drops to the mattress on the other side of you. You’re gulping for breath, shaking with overstimulation. He kisses your aching jaw, your sticky mouth, the tears gathered on your lashes.

“That was,” he whispers against your lips. “Oh my God.”

Rose laughs quietly, loops her leg over yours.

She leans across you to kiss John, their lips moving lazily together, then she looks down at you. “Dave’s turn?” she says.

“Looks like he might pass out otherwise,” says John.

There are a hundred witty comebacks on the tip of your tongue, you swear, but Rose turns to kiss you, licking her way softly into your mouth. Maybe you _are_ going to pass out -- Jesus God, you’re coming undone. John strokes his hand over your sweat-damp skin, and when he rubs over your nipple, you sob like a needy bastard and arch into his touch. Rose’s hand on your dick tightens, drawing you down, drawing you out. John replaces his fingers with lips and tongue, hot and soft and wet, tugging at your nipple while his hand wanders down your straining stomach, down your leg, pulls your knee to the side --

And drifts back up the inside of your thigh, too fast and too torturously slow, all the things you longed for in miserable fantasies but never once expected in real life. His fingers stroke through your crease and brush over your asshole. And you want him to fuck you, you want him inside you, touching you and testing you and using you, and just that thought is enough to send the crashing waves of ecstasy over you. You burst into Rose’s hand, hurtling over the edge into white-hot oblivion.

As soon as your body stops trying to achieve full earth-to-orbit rocket launch, you come back to yourself enough to realize that you’ve got one fistful of bedsheets and one of John’s hair, and you loosen both hands carefully, knuckles creaking. John kisses you once, softly, right over your heart, and everything that ever felt fixed in you breaks all over again.

John looks at Rose, and she looks back at him like there’s no one else in the whole world, and the air is crackly-bright between them again. He pushes himself up and crawls right over you to get to her, all long and lean against her soft pale curves. His hands skate over her body, and then he shifts down, kissing her throat, her breast, her stomach. She strokes her fingers through his hair and he nudges her legs open and settles there, bowing his head to the juncture of her thighs.

You give them room, clean yourself up with a wad of tissues from the nightstand, curl on your side and watch. She catches one of his hands and laces their fingers together.

Everything in you is empty and quiet. You watch them as if they’re in slow motion. His eyes are wide and bright, watching her reactions so carefully, and she props herself up on an elbow to look down at him, fearless, a perfect closed circle.

You should go. You should leave them to this, you’re intruding, they’re done with you, they laid you between them and gave you what you wanted and took what they needed, and now they’re back the way they should be --

Then John’s eyes flick over to yours and you can see his cheek lift in a smile. He does something with the hand you can’t see and Rose arches her back, moaning.

You laugh outright, and your sad-sack self-preoccupation dissipates like a shadow. The asshole is showing off for you, damn him.

Rose turns to look at you, beautiful and tousled and a little wild, and when she reaches out a hand you go to her, curling around her so you can feel the tremors all through her body. She takes your hand and brings it decisively to her breasts. You stroke her skin with fingertips and palm, velvet-soft and warm and yielding. Her nipples pebble under your touch, and you pluck at them the way you remember she likes. John watches your fingers hungrily, and you watch him, and you don’t speak, you don’t have to.

When Rose comes it’s like a groundswell, like ocean waves, and John hums happily and presses closer, closing his eyes. You can feel the butterfly-beating of her pulse under her skin as her body slowly relaxes, and she stretches in your arms, languid like a cat, while John crawls up on her other side and flops to the mattress.

It’s quiet for a moment, then John mumbles, half into the pillow, “Congratulations, you’ve passed the audition.”

Rose cracks up, and so do you.

As Rose’s giggles subside, you glance over. John’s eyes are closed, face utterly peaceful. Rose sees where you’re looking. She nuzzles the side of your face until you smile.

“I hope that wasn’t more than you bargained for,” she says softly.

“Huh?” Her eyes are wide, close to yours, lovely as ever. “No, God no. That was great. A-plus threesome, would definitely threesome again. Gold stars all around, really.”

She smiles. “I’m trying to ask if you’re ok, you dummy.”

You almost make a smartass remark, and then you don’t. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ok.”

“Good.” John half-mumbles something, drops his arm around both of you, pulls you in tighter. You lace your fingers through his. Rose rubs her cheek against your collarbone, and you smooth down her hair.

You’re still reeling. You haven’t truly stopped.

“We’ll be having conversations about all of this, won’t we?” you ask.

“Count on it,” says Rose, and you can feel her breath on your skin. “But later.”

“Yeah,” you say into the quiet of the room, the sound of their breathing. “Later.”

Later will be much later, because you all wake up in an hour and realize you’re almost late for Jade and Karkat’s farewell brunch. You hightail it back to your room without seeing anyone, take the world’s fastest shower, and make it to the hotel buffet just as Karkat and Jade enter, hand-in-hand, in all their sleepy happy morning-after glory.

John and Rose are sitting with Sollux and Aradia -- you see Feferi nearby, making her way toward them with plates loaded comically high -- and when John sees you he beckons you over with a brilliant smile that warms you down to your toes.

As you make your way across the crowded room, Terezi grabs you around the waist and goes up on tiptoes to hiss in your ear, “I have _so much_ to tell you, coolkid!” Vriska is nearby, talking to Eridan, and when she tosses her hair you can see a row of spectacular hickeys on her neck.

You’ll deal with it later, and you’ll deal with why Dirk is sulking between Roxy and Jane while Jake laughs uproariously at something Equius said, hand laid on his forearm, and you’ll deal with the glorious new complication that has sprung up in your life, but not until you’ve had at least two cups of coffee and an obscene amount of bacon.

And later, when Rose whispers in your ear that she’s thinking of extending their hotel reservation for an extra day, and would you like to join, you say yes without even hesitating.

 


End file.
